I have a metastasis to my lung that has grown from 6 mm in June to 9 mm in September, over a period of exactly 99 days. I got online and put the information into Doubling Time calculators, and the doubling time is about 53-56 days.
Question: is this rate of growth considered aggressive cancer? I looked on the internet but wasn't able to find an answer to this question. I also know that aggressive cancer is typified by other characteristics, such as how well-defined the cancer cells are, but for my basic purposes, I was wondering what the Doubling Time of my cancer indicates.
Background: I had a surgery in January 2015 to remove a metastatic tumor from the lower left lobe, near the wall of the lung, and my surgeon said he thought he had gotten all the cancer. The scan in June, however, showed the new tumor more in the center of my lung. I had a biopsy, which showed the tumor positive for Esophageal Cancer, which was my initial cancer. So:
- 2007: Initial Esophageal Cancer
- 2014: Metastasis to lower left lobe, surgically removed
- 2015: Metastasis to center left lobe
Thank you in advance for any help or comments on this.
Dave
Reply # - October 24, 2015, 05:46 AM
Hi Dave,
Hi Dave,
I don't think that the doubling time of this tumor, as a single factor, would lead to the conclusion that you have an aggressive cancer. Cancer grows over time, and this doubling rate is well within the normal range of growth rates seen in cancer. As Dr. West said (in the context of lung cancer):
"[W]hile there is a lot of variability in how quickly lung cancers grow, the fastest and slowest moving are less likely to be cancer than the ones that double over something in the range of a month to a year or so." - http://cancergrace.org/lung/2007/11/12/lung-nodule-doubling-time/
So while this tumor may be closer to the faster-growing end of that spectrum, the cancer's spread to other locations and resistance to treatment would be more relevant to a determination of its aggressiveness.
JimC
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